What the Lively-Baldoni Legal Fees Ruling Means

$363,245.40 in attorneys’ fees. $44,206.35 in costs. Approximately $407,451.75 awarded against $8,035,040.88 requested—roughly 5%.[1]

That is the immediate arithmetic from Judge Liman’s Aug. 26, 2026 order in the Lively-Baldoni litigation. It is also the wrong number to treat as a legal formula. The percentage describes what happened to this fee petition; it does not establish that a defendant in every defamation case will recover 5% of its request. The useful question is how the court got there.

The award followed the claim, not the entire dispute

The order treated California Civil Code § 47.1 as a fee-and-cost entitlement for a prevailing defendant in the statute’s covered retaliatory-defamation setting. That setting matters: the defamation claim must arise from a harassment complaint made without malice. Section 47.1 therefore does not turn every defamation defendant into a fee claimant. It addresses a narrower situation involving a defamation action brought against someone who made a qualifying harassment complaint.

Once the statutory entitlement applied, the court still had to determine the compensable work and the reasonable amount. The award was confined to fees and costs attributable to defending the defamation claim. Work connected to the broader litigation, public-relations efforts, or other objectives did not become recoverable merely because it appeared in the same billing record.

That distinction is the operational center of the ruling. A prevailing party may establish entitlement under § 47.1 and still lose substantial portions of its petition because the time entries do not defend the covered claim, because the hours are excessive, or because the claimed costs are not compensable.

Rates survived; hours did not

Judge Liman did not reject the fee request by finding the lawyers’ billing rates unreasonable. The order accepted the rates as “not unreasonable” in light of the case’s complexity and stakes.[2][3][4] That finding separates the rate question from the hours question.

The court found the hours unreasonable. In practical terms, the accepted hourly rate did not validate every hour billed at that rate. A fee petition can therefore fail through the volume or character of the work even when the court accepts that the lawyers’ market rates are appropriate for the litigation.

The same logic applies to task descriptions. The court held that media-relations work was “not integral to defending the defamation claim.”[2][3][4] That work may have been connected to the surrounding public controversy, but connection to the dispute was not enough. The relevant inquiry was whether the time was integral to the compensable defense.

Travel was also cut.[2][3][4] The order thus reduced the request through several distinct controls: claim attribution, unreasonable hours, non-integral media work, and travel. The roughly 5% result is the cumulative effect of those findings, not a standalone judicial valuation of the case.

What the numbers do—and do not—measure

The award combines two different categories: $363,245.40 in attorneys’ fees and $44,206.35 in costs.[1] Reporting them as a single “$400,000 award” loses information that matters when counsel assesses exposure. Fees reflect compensable legal work after review of rates and hours. Costs are a separate component and should be tracked separately in the underlying petition and order.

The order is important because it makes § 47.1 financially concrete. Before a fee ruling, statutory fee shifting can remain an abstract possibility in a pre-suit risk memo. After this ruling, counsel can point to an actual federal-court award under the California protection. But the ruling does not support using either the $8 million request or the $407,451.75 award as a statewide benchmark.

The planning consequence for counsel

For a potential defendant, § 47.1 creates real fee exposure if the statutory conditions are met and the defendant prevails. The exposure is not necessarily the amount the defense team spends, and it is not necessarily the amount submitted in a fee petition. It is the portion of a defensible, segregated record that survives review.

That makes billing discipline part of substantive risk planning. Counsel evaluating a potential case should be able to identify work directed to the covered defamation claim, separate work performed for other claims or objectives, explain the hours, and distinguish litigation tasks from media or reputational activities. The order gives courts a concrete basis for examining those divisions later.

For a claimant considering a retaliatory defamation action, the statute’s fee consequence is equally material. The protection for a person who made a qualifying harassment complaint without malice is not costless to invoke against. A claim that triggers § 47.1 can expose the losing claimant to a substantial award, even though the eventual amount will depend on the work that is properly attributable and the court’s review of the petition.

The Lively-Baldoni ruling therefore supplies a quantified risk signal, not a forecast. It shows that a prevailing defendant can obtain a substantial award under § 47.1 while also showing why a large request may be sharply reduced. The operative exposure is the claim-scoped, supportable fee record—not the headline request.

References

1. “Judge grants Blake Lively $400,000 of $8M in legal fees she sought in film fight with Justin Baldoni” — AP News, Aug. 26, 2026
2. Coverage of Judge Liman’s Aug. 26, 2026 fee order — NBC News, Aug. 26, 2026
3. Coverage of Judge Liman’s Aug. 26, 2026 fee order — Variety, Aug. 26, 2026
4. Coverage of Judge Liman’s Aug. 26, 2026 fee order — Deadline, Aug. 26, 2026